Barnet Council Datagate Scandal - proof that the Cabinet has lost track of reality

I am endebted to commenter ASKMIKEFREER for drawing my attention to a comment by one of the members of Barnet Council cabinet on his blog. Councillor Robert Rams answered a question on his blogs stating the following :-

But is the council the best organisation to administer banks of servers or manage call centres? Are these really our key areas of expertise? There are private sector organisations that specialise in running back office and customer service activity and they do so better than the council ever could.

The full text is available here :-

http://robertrams.wordpress.com/2011/07/11/new-support-and-customer-service-organisation-market-day/#respond

Rams as a member of the cabinet should be aware of all of the confidential paperwork and reports discussed in cabinet sessions. He has been a very vocal supporter of the OneBarnet program and clearly thinks that outsourcing is far and away the best answer. He clearly had not bothered to check how the company which have the contract to run the Barnet Council datacentre were doing when he made these comments. In other words, he was talking complete nonsense and not bothering to check the facts.

A Barnet Council internal report, passed to this blog as a response to an FOI response says that this risk has been identified with the management of the Barnet Council Datacentre :-

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ISSUE -  The  Data  Centre  and  Comms  Rooms  are  at  significant  risk  as  the  A\C  is  not  working  correctly,  the  sprinkler  system  has  been  turned  off  due  to  a  water  leak  and  cables  are  at  risk  of  being  eaten  into  by  Rats.  

RISK -   2e2 (company with the contract to manage the datacentre)  will  pass  all  risk  back  onto  the  council  and  not  deliver  to their  contractual  arrangements.  

ACTION -  Improve  the  relationship  with  2e2  and  look  into terminating  the  2e2  contract  early  and  bringing  services  and staff,  under  TUPE,  in‐house,  if  necessary.  

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In other words, the way to clear up the mess when outsourcing fails is to bring it back into the public sector to sort the problem out. What more proof could leader of the Council, Richard Cornelius need that Councillor Rams is not up to the job? Either Rams was completely clueless about the state of Barnet Council's datacantres and the company running them, indicating a catastrophic failure to do his job (for which he receives a generous allowance) or he deliberately sought to conceal the information from a Barnet resident and present a completely dishonest appraisal of the state of Barnets datacentre infrastructure, to support his ideological belief in outsourcing. Either way, I cannot see any way he can be allowed to continue as a cabinet member. As I have repeatedly stated, the sole function of Councillors is to oversee the council executive and ensure they deliver good services to the people of Barnet. Nobody can pretend any longer that Councillor Robert Rams is capable of doing this.